


When a memory is lost, so is the soul

by Ghelik



Series: The 100 Fics [81]
Category: The 100
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Light Angst, Memory Alteration, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24441601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: After five years, Echo finally finds Bellamy. The only problem? He doesn't remember her.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake & Raven Reyes, Bellamy Blake/Echo, Echo & John Murphy (The 100)
Series: The 100 Fics [81]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/543928
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	When a memory is lost, so is the soul

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a quote from the movie "A moment to remember"

Bellamy’s curled up on his narrow cot; he’s too drained to do anything else but other than lay there. Screams and gunfire echo against the walls, but he isn’t sure if it’s his memories or something happening beyond the barred door.

Shadows dancing on the floor of the corridor catch his attention.

Are they coming for him again? It feels like only minutes have passed since the disciples brought him from the White Room, but time has been behaving strangely since he was captured: dragging its feet and skipping around at random, so who knows.

He isn’t sure what the disciples are doing with him, only that every day he gets strapped to that chair and plunged into a world of fire. He has a vague memory of threatening them, of rebelling against their prodding and shuffling through his brain. But days blur together, and his thoughts are scattered, plagued by monsters, twisted in a way he can’t be sure whether they are real or just imagined.

A woman, dressed in the standard-issue blue suit of the disciple guard, stops on the other side of the door. She is grim-faced, her plump mouth pulled into a tight, displeased line, and Bellamy tries not to tense. The long nose and caramel-colored eyes are familiar, but faces, much like everything else, are difficult to distinguish in this place. 

The fact that she is alone sparks a tiny, rebellious spark inside him. He could fight one guard. He is strong enough and knows how to fight; he could try to escape.

Bellamy drops his gaze to the floor, squashing those thoughts. The guards are not cruel, as long as he complies.

He wishes he could tell Murphy that he understands now. He isn’t better than him; torture has broken him, too. But he can’t because he is at the mercy of the disciples, and nobody is coming to save him, too busy trying to survive Praimfaya to notice that he is gone.

The guard’s boots catch his attention. Worn and patched up with mismatched laces caked in mud, they are unlike anything else in this pristine facility, with its smooth white walls and symmetric designs. The boots look out of place; they don’t belong here. When he closes his eyes, he can nearly see them, carelessly abandoned beside a heavy metal door, traipsing through leave-covered forests and…

The door bangs open, startling him out of half-remembered memories. Bellamy tenses, the part of his brain that isn’t completely worn out tensing for a fight that will never come.

The guard doesn’t manhandle him out of the bench. Instead, she kneels in front of him, her hand strong and calloused as it lands on his shoulder. When she talks, her voice sends shivers down his spine.

“Bellamy, can you hear me?”

He looks up into her sacred caramel eyes, feeling a sense of déjà-vu. Shouldn’t it be her inside the cage and him the one doing the rescuing?

“Echo.”

Plump lips curve into a small, shaky smile, and she runs her fingers through his sweat-matted hair. “We need to stop meeting like this,” she says like it’s an inside joke. Before he has time to question her, she is leaning forward and pressing her lips to his.

For a split second, Bellamy is too startled to do anything but lay there. Then he remembers who she is, not that scared woman curled inside a cage, but a duplicitous spy who abused his trust, and shoves her away with what’s left of his strength. Echo stumbles back, confusion and panic flitting through her beautiful eyes. He pushes himself up on unsteady legs.

“Bellamy?” The way she shapes his name is confusing, both extraordinarily familiar and foreign. Something in his chest twitches with half-remembered warmth at her Azgedan accent, shivering at the way it curls around the M and turns the A into something that sounds more like an O.

“Are you guys ready? We need to leave!” snaps a feminine voice from the doorway. No matter how strange she looks in the disciple’s uniform, he will always recognize his little sister.

A wave of relief crashes over him, making him stumble. She looks older, her hair no longer twisted into her preferred grounder braids, her face whipped clean of the warpaint she wore at the conclave. She is safe and here. “O!”

Her smile is softer than it ever was either on the ground or in the Ark. The faint crowfeet around her eyes and laugh lines make her look so much like their mother; he wants to weep.

“Hey, big brother.”

Bellamy crushes Octavia’s slender body against his, burying his nose into her hair and breathing her in. She smells of forests and blood and home under the harsh lemony tang of the facility. Her body is warm and real and alive.

“I thought I would never see you again,” he whispers into her hair.

Octavia rubs his back, coaxing him to let go of her. “Come on; Raven will beam us out of here as soon as we get within range.”

His knees shake, but he forces his legs to follow Octavia out into the hall, to the door that leads to a staircase. There they find another woman, her face covered in small, runic tattoos, wielding a machine gun.

“Who is she?”

“That’s Hope Diyoza,” says Octavia, as if those words should mean anything to him. Then to Hope, “Where the fuck is Gabriel?

“Securing the exit, come on.”

Climbing up the stairs requires a lot more concentration than it should, and O keeps pulling on his arm to coax him to move quicker. Fatigue makes his limbs heavy and uncoordinated; his awareness swims in and out of focus. At some point, they must reach the exit, because there is another stranger and Echo talking into a small mouthpiece isn’t as weird as he would have expected: “Raven, we’ve got him. Take us home.”

The world turns inside out with a loud pop, and the facility with its small cells and white rooms of pain vanishes. For a moment, he hangs in the vast blackness of space, weightless and painless, and then his ears pop, and he crashes on the wooden floor of a cozy living room. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Raven and Emori, their heads bent over a bright display, and he can’t help but wonder when the two women met. Clarke hurries forward, helping him to his feet.

It is weird seeing her dressed in clean, elegantly cut clothes, with her skin unmarred by scratches or blood. But when she smiles, his heart flutters with recognition, and he falls into her arms with a sigh of relief. She is warm and alive in his arms, and Bellamy could weep.

***

Bellamy knows something is wrong as soon as he opens his eyes and sees the white plaster of the ceiling. He is laying on a soft bed, under a quilted blanket and sheets that smell like flowers. The walls are painted in soft pastels; sunlight streams through the window to his left. Beside the bed is a beautifully crafted wooden nightstand holding a ceramic lamp with a cloth shade and a small vase with delicate white flowers. Everything about this setting is… _wrong_.

Earth was never this clean and well put together, at least not since the bombs. The ground was harsh and brutal, all sharp edges and repurposed parts, and then it got destroyed by Praimfaya. This softness and warmth, this newness belongs in the vids they showed on the Ark, it is the memory of something he could never touch.

Slumped in a wicker chair beside his bed is Echo. Her head hangs to the side, short, pixy hair falling over her brow in small wisps. She has changed out of the guard’s uniform and into worn leggings, and a black tank-top he is pretty sure belongs to Raven. The black lines of her tattoo seem to stand out against the backdrop of this cozy little room. Her boots are unlaced, dried mud cracked on the dark leather. Someone sewed a patch on the side of the left one.

He pushes himself up, feeling more rested than he has in all his life. The movement startles the spy awake. She straightens with a groan, rubbing her neck. Her eyes are impossibly soft as she looks at him. Her lips part, as if to say something, but he cuts in with a harsher than intended: “What are you doing here?”

Something shutters behind her round eyes.

“Where else would I be?”

“I don’t know. With your people? Planting a bomb for Roan?” even as he says those words, something about the shape of them feels wrong. 

Echo’s tanned skin goes a few shades paler. She gapes at him, and he would believe the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes – does believe them – if she hadn’t fooled him before. Bellamy clings to the memory of her, covered in blood and wide-eyed, lying to his face: _The summit is a trap, the assassin is already there_. Clings to the anger and loss and sense of betrayal, even if it feels worn and old, because at least that makes sense. He remembers that day clearly, whereas everything that happened afterward, everything surrounding Praimfaya, is a jumbled mess of sensations and half-remembered flashes of light.

“Roan is dead,” says Echo, searching his face. Bellamy isn’t sure what she’s trying to find and doesn’t care.

“He’s dead?” How is he dead? He was alive last time he saw him. Alive and covered in blood with a sword in his hand.

“He died at the conclave,” Echo says, her eyebrows pulled together pleadingly. “Before the second Praimfaya,” Bellamy remembers the conclave, remembers being terribly scared for his sister and then- His wrist pulse, the dark scars around them should mean something, but he isn’t sure what. “He banished me from Azgeda,” Echo is explaining. “We went to space in Raven’s rocket. Do you remember that?” her eyes are wide, pleading. “You, Murphy, Emori, Harper, Monty Raven, and I left for the Ring in the sky. We fed on Monty’s algae and played card games for six years,” she falls on her knees at his feet, her calloused hands clasp his with something that feels like desperation. “Please, Bellamy, tell me you remember our family.”

But the whole setting doesn’t make sense. Why would they leave, there was a bunker, he distinctly remembers a bunker. I’ll _be there, under the floor_. He would never leave his sister behind, nor Clarke. And why in the world would he take Echo of all people into the Ring? Not to mention the part where the seven of them became a family? It’s ridiculous.

“Why would we take you to space?”

Her fingers spasm around his hands. There is something else she wants him to believe.

“Because you are kind and selfless and wouldn’t let me die.” Her eyebrows plead for him to understand something she isn’t saying, and Bellay feels a stone dropping in his stomach.

“Echo,” he says, pulling away from her, slowly but firmly, feeling extremely uncomfortable at seeing her on her knees at his feet, “are you in love with me?” His anger is gone, too old, and frayed to hold on to, but he still doesn’t trust her.

“Yes! Bellamy, I-“

Well, shit

“I thought love was weakness. Isn’t that what your people say?”

“You are my people!”

“Look,” he says, running his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what happened in space, and I am sorry about Roan, but we barely know each other, and most of our interactions have been you trying to kill my people,” except for that time where she saved his life in the Mountain. And then again when she didn’t shoot Riley. Bellamy licks his lips, trying to find a way to extract himself of this conversation, at least until he can make sense of the jumbled mess of feeling warring in his chest. It is always like this with Echo: a desperate need to protect her, and an unsettling feeling of untrustworthiness. “Thank you for helping my sister getting me out of the facility.”

He sidesteps the still kneeling spy and hurries towards the door, his stomach twisted in knots and the uncomfortable sensation that he has done something terribly cruel.

***

Echo can’t breathe.

Her lungs won’t expand to allow for air, her heart shudders and twists painfully in her chest, tearing her insides to shreds, breaking over and over. As if someone had stabbed her and was twisting the knife in the wound.

In her mind, she keeps replaying the disgusted and confused look in Bellamy’s face when she kissed him, the distressed shift of his shoulders as he asked her if she loved him, his strong rejection.

For five years, she has dreamed of the moment she would find Bellamy. The reunion of her family was the goal that kept her fighting, sane, during her stay on Skyring. And during that time, she thought that nothing could hurt as much as the impotence of seeing Bellamy dragged away, of being unable to stop it from happening. Skyring felt like penance for her failure, but there had been an end in sight. Five years to train and become quicker and more alert, five years to hone her body to make sure she would never fail her family again.

Echo fights for breath, but there is a sob lodged in her throat, and air won’t pass through.

She was wrong. Impotence and failure, she can deal with, but Bellamy forgetting about her and their family is worse. It is a thousand times worse. It feels like being banished, like Roan’s death and her best friend’s death, and the fire that burned her parent’s farm all rolled together.

She bites her knuckles, trying to swallow the agonic noise that is trying to claw its way out.

“Hey, how’re you holding up?”

The spy raises her head to find Murphy leaning against the doorway, a metal bin under one arm, and a frown etched on his brow. She swallows, wipes her face with the backs of her hands, tries to slide her mask back on, even though she knows Murphy will never judge her.

“What can I do for you?”

“Raven told me about the amnesia,” he says, walking into the room and setting the bin in front of her. “And I thought, on the Ring, whenever you felt like you missed the ground a little too much, we would set some stupid book on fire.” He lights one of his matches. “And since I went to the trouble of stealing these from the Eligius prisoners…” he drops the lit match into the bucket. Whatever he’s using for kindling catches instantly, orange tongues twisting in the confines of the metal walls.

Back on the Ring, fire was forbidden. Murphy never cared, and both Echo and Emori indulged him far too often. She bonded with him over his secret bucket of fire, on those long nights, sitting as they do now, side by side, in companionable silence. He cried on her shoulder when Emori ended things with him. Now it’s his arm around her.

“He’ll remember you again, you’ll see.”

The sob stuck in her throat claws out, loud and wet and ugly. She would be ashamed if she weren’t in so much pain already. “I can’t-“

“Hey, listen to me. He will remember, ok? Whatever this amnesia thing is, Octavia recovered, and so did Hope. And, if that fails, I will beat the memories back into him.”

The prospect of Murphy, who was always a pretty mediocre fighter, trying to beat Bellamy, manages to tear a wet chuckle out of her. Murphy smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Everything will be ok, you’ll see.”

“I can’t lose my family again, Murphy,” she confesses, eyes fixed on the crackling fire. It was always easy talking to him like this as if she weren’t bearing her weaknesses to another human being, but the flames themselves. “I am not strong enough.”

“You won’t. No matter what, you will always be our badass sister.”

Echo swallows the lump that rises to the back of her throat. “I thought, I was a dirty Azgeda you wished had burned with the rest of her disgusting clan of salvages.”

Beside her, she can nearly feel Murphy rolling his eyes. He knocks his head against her shoulder. “I said that over a hundred years ago. Will you drop it already?”

Echo sniffs. The warmth of the fire and her friend’s presence easing the worst of the fear off her shoulders. The pain is still there, twisting like a snake in her chest, but at least now she doesn’t feel so miserably alone.

“I don’t think I will.”

“Spiteful spy,” the insult became a compliment too many years ago to count.

“Cunning fox.”

They lapse into silence.

She has missed her family dearly over the past five years, the trust and easiness, their banter, support and Raven’s rambling explanations of tech, Emori’s dirty sense of humor, Harper’s kindness and Monty’s resourcefulness, even Murphy’s dark moods. She thanks whatever Spirits may listen that she still fits with them.

***

Bellamy frowns.

He is sitting on the back porch of a farmhouse on a hill, surrounded by trees, on an alien planet illuminated by two suns. His sister is off somewhere, galivanting with a former terrorist and her daughter. Madi was Heda but isn’t anymore. A bunch of criminals responsible for the destruction of the Earth is helping create a safe place to live in. Jordan is Harper and Monty’s son, and he is also only two years younger than Bellamy.

And yet, somehow, the strangest thing about all of this is Echo, playing with Gaia, Madi, Murphy, Emori, and Jordan. The spy looks carefree and genuinely happy as she chases the others through the manicured lawn and something in his chest twitches with barely remembered fondness. A part of him knows he has seen her like this before; mostly, it feels like discovering this softer, happier part of her for the first time.

“Hey,” Clarke smiles down at him. “Mind if I join you?”  
The blonde has changed as well. In his mind’s eye, she is still a head-strong eighteen-year-old carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders—a girl he wanted to protect with every fiber of his being. Beside him sits a twenty-something woman who has mothered a child, who was body-snatched and nearly died again, but didn’t, who is keeping a tenuous peace between warring factions and supervising the construction of a compound for the last survivors of planet Earth.

“Are you mad at me, too?”

“I don’t think anyone’s mad at you, Bellamy.”

“Murphy punched me this morning. Raven spent an hour screaming at me.”

His eyes follow Echo running away from Jordan, a golden dog at her heels. Because in Sanctum, there are dogs, big, fluffy, tail-wagging, drooling dogs.

“Well, I didn’t come to shout at you.”

“Thank god for small mercies.”

Clarke chuckles, taking a seat on the porch steps beside him.

Gaia tackles Echo, and both women roll around on the grass.

“You really don’t remember anything after Praimfaya?”

He should be angry, should feel a sense of loss at having lost over six peaceful, happy years of his life, but he isn’t. Everything Emori, Clarke, and even Gaia have told him feels like something disconnected from him. A movie he saw in a vid and then forgot. Nothing in his mind stirs when Emori talks about the Ring, about training sessions and struggling the disgusting algae down. That relaxed life must have happened to someone else.

And even the more realistic parts, those full of violence and fear and threats, seem weirdly out of character, unlike something he would do. Betray Clarke? Risk Madi’s life to save Echo’s life? He would never put a child at risk, much less for-

He shakes his head.

“You were better after you came back. More level-headed, happier, or, at least, you seemed to, when you were with her.”

Echo has managed to pin Gaia to the ground. There is a flush high on her cheeks and a smile that could put both suns to shame as she proclaims: “Ah! Trikru bends again to the mighty Azgeda!”

“Not for long!” shouts Madi, charging. “For Louwoda Klironkru!”

The way Echo lets the girl tackle her to the ground and immobilize her is oddly familiar, but he can’t pinpoint where he saw it before.

He wishes he was still angry with Echo. Anger made sense; he could trace it back to the source and be sure of his right to feel it. But he isn’t. Instead, when he looks at the spy, he only sees a strong, capable woman, loyal to a fault. The softness and acceptance are new; their origin shrouded in lost memories.

Clarke knocks his shoulder with hers.

“You’ll get it back. Gabriel said so.”

“You guys trust this Gabriel character a lot.”

“Well, he did help bring you back,” smiles Clarke.

***

The sword is lying on top of the dresser in his room. It looks extremely out of place in this cozy, old-timey house with the lace curtains and warm glow of the lamps. Much like everything that came from Earth, the sword is harsh, worn leather sheath decorated with the faded Azgeda crest, and a boar tusk acting as a guard.

He picks it up without thinking.

It is well balanced; the bone grip sits comfortably in his palm. He unsheathes the well-cared-for blade. It cuts through the air easily when he twirls it in his hand.

The movement tickles something in the back of his mind, not a memory but a feeling of warmth so intense, it takes him aback.

Bellamy sets the sword down, chasing the feeling before it slips between his fingers.

The bed is on the other end of the room. A wooden frame and a thick mattress covered in decorative pillows cross-stitched with floral designs. It is flanked by twin nightstands—everything about it symmetrical and warm.

Bellamy approaches the left side of the bed, his heart hammering in his chest as he slips his hand under the pillow leaning against the headboard. Echo’s knife is there like he knew it would be because the spy can’t sleep if she doesn’t have a weapon at hand.

He sits on the orange comforter, looking down at the knife.

Again he has the knowledge that he never liked it. But he can’t remember the arguments over it, can’t remember what made him accept is presence on their bed. Knows he let her have it, because her happiness mattered more than his uneasiness, but can’t actually remember, can’t remember the feelings or the conversations, only abstract knowledge is left behind.

He watches the light glint off the curved blade. Someone has carved his name on the hilt.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you were here.”

In the doorway, Echo shifts as if to leave, a grimace that tries to look like a smile on her plump lips. She is dressed for sleep in a loose shirt that reaches halfway to her naked knees, her short pixy hair is still damp from her shower, softening the sharp line of her nose. Barefoot, she is ready for bed, and Bellamy stands. He is sitting on her side.

“I just…” she swallows, her eyes flit from the bed to him, to his hand. “I thought it best if I continue sleeping with Raven. You will be ok on your own?”

“I am a big boy, Echo.”

She huffs a laugh and takes a step closer.

“We are the second door to the left if you need anything.”

“I’ll be fine.”  
“Good.”

The silence is awkward, full of her shifting gaze and his racing mind.

“I am sorry,” he says. “I was cruel to you, and I shouldn’t have said those things.”

She nods her head. “There is no need for an apology.”

“You always let me off the hook way too easily.”

The spy’s breath hitches, her big caramel eyes searching his face with desperate hope. Whatever she is looking for must not be there, because, it shudders and dies after a moment, leaving only the feeling that he has hurt her for no good reason. Again.

Echo clears her throat. “I came for the knife. Raven is indulging me; I must take advantage while I can.”

“Of course.”

Her fingers brush his as she takes the blade.

“I can sleep on the floor if you’d rather not be alone.”

“I’ll be fine, Echo.”

“Good. I’ll leave you to your rest then.”

She retreats, padding away on silent feet, leaving him wrongfooted and guilty.

***

Echo enjoys hard, manual labor, its distracting and keeps her away from the farmhouse, which are the two main reasons why she joins the Eligius prisoners. Building the new compound requires a lot of moving heavy stuff from one place to another, a lot of digging to plant foundations with the suns beating down on them.

Once she proves she is as hardworking as the rest of them, the Eligius prisoners accept her into their fold, including her into their crude jokes and letting her join them during their meal breaks. Their presence is a welcome distraction because it doesn’t let her mind wander back to the house and the man that still regards her as a stranger. It doesn’t let her dissect every gesture and word as she desperately searches for a hint that her lover’s memories are back.

When the first sun sets, Echo returns home, sore and sweaty, in desperate need of a shower. For a second, as she makes her way up to the front door, her heart skips a beat. _Maybe today…_

Hope is a terrible thing to have. A small ember, too small to keep her warm. A useless wish that makes her heart beat faster as she climbs the stairs towards the front door. She has always been able to control her thoughts, but tired and sweaty, in those twilight moments, her mind runs wild. She imagines herself stepping into the small entrance hall to find Bellamy, bearded and smiling his little sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his head with his boyish bashfulness. She imagines him throwing his arms around her and crushing her to his broad chest. 

Her heart hammers expectantly by the time she closes her fingers around the cool handle.

He is never there. Instead, she finds him sat at the dining table with Madi, pouring over her homework. Bellamy, clean-shaven, with only the smallest hint of gray at his temple waves, an awkward smile touching his lips. Everyday Echo has to squash the disappointment and pretend a part of her isn’t dying, isn’t raging.

 _Hope is a waste of time; Queen_ Nia used to say. _Hope won’t put food on the table or prevent wars from happening._ Back when Echo belonged to her, she had better control of her feelings. Then again, her hopes and dreams were precisely those of Azgeda, and she could do something to make them come true.

“Monitoring to Echo, do you read me?”

She blinks, shaking her head. How long has she been staring? Enough for Bellamy to look at her with a small concerned frown, apparently.

“Sorry, I was lost in thought.”

“You look tense,” he says in his ‘ _no shit’_ tone. Echo doesn’t know how to answer. If they were back on the Ring, Bellamy would rub her arms reassuringly, or offer a massage. He would coax her to talk until she caved and started complaining about Murphy’s latest shenanigans, or Raven’s incomprehensible technobabble. But here, with this man who regards her with equal parts of mistrust and confusion, what can she possibly say. “Do you want to spar?”

The question is unexpected. Sparring is what they did before Bellamy found other ways to tire the tension out of her. The spy wonders, like so often since his return, if he is asking because of something he remembered, or it’s just his natural reaction to seeing her distressed.

“Yeah, ok.”

***

Bellamy has been back for over a week, and his memory doesn’t seem to be returning. It is frustrating and annoying because he catches glimpses of what he has lost in his interactions with what they affectionately call Spacekru, and he wants them back. Wants to understand the inside jokes and join their easy banter. It is a weird situation because he isn’t actively excluded, but he feels like he’s toeing the outskirts of the group. Maybe, if Clarke were in the same position, he wouldn’t be this lonely, but, even though Clarke isn’t part of Spacekru, she has Gaia and Madi, and the three of them seem to be a completely different unit. One in which he doesn’t fit either.

And then, there is Echo.

Echo, who he can’t look at without his breath hitching. Echo, with her slight accent and her small, private smiles, who laughs with a huff and moves so silently she startles everyone around her, who is always down to play with Madi and works tirelessly on the new compound and doesn’t take bullshit from anyone and spars with the grace of a ballerina and can bring Murphy out of his funks and coax Raven to take a break. Echo, who spent five years looking for her partner, only to find him in his place.

Echo, who is sprawled on the couch, head tipped back in a way that can’t be comfortable, a book forgotten on her chest and a cute crease between her eyebrows. She’s snoring faintly; her long hands lay crumpled on her chest like sleeping birds.

Bellamy picks up one of the pillows at the end of the couch and slips it under her head, careful not to wake her. The spy hums in her sleep, her long fingers twitch and then settles again. She looks peaceful in her sleep, relaxed even with the small frown around her lips, and he feels a sense of longing so strong he has to look away or do something stupid like brush her hair back from her brow.

He retreats into the dining room with half a mind to fetch her a glass of water for when she wakes up, when he sees Raven, bent over the stack of blueprints spread over the dining table, greasy machine parts doubling as paperweights.

“Hasn’t anyone told you that staring at someone while they sleep is creepy?” asks the mechanic without raising her eyes.

Bellamy feels warmth spreading over his cheeks and looks over his shoulder at Echo without meaning to. He should have left the book on the coffee table. Echo has a tendency to kick around in her sleep if it falls while she rolls over, it will startle her awake…

“Yo! Monitoring to Bellamy, do you read me?”

“Do you think she hates me?”

Raven heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Why would she hate you?”

“She spent so long searching for her partner and got saddled with me instead.”

The mechanic leans back, her lips pursed. “It’s not your fault. I am sure you didn’t choose to forget nearly a fifth of your life. And we are happy to have you back.”

“Still.”

Raven throws an eraser at his head. “Stop it. Echo doesn’t hate you. I don’t think she is capable of hating you. It’s just hard, you know? You two were sickeningly in love. But she is strong and capable. “

“Yes, she is.”

On the couch, Echo shifts the book falling towards the backrest instead of the floor; she scrunches her nose in her sleep. 

“Oh, god, here we go again,” groans Raven rolling her eyes. “Don’t worry about it. Everything will be fine.” It takes him a moment to notice he’s smiling like an idiot.

***

When she comes back from the compound site and before supper, Echo and Bellamy spar. It has become part of their daily routine, and she craves those sessions with a passion. She always enjoyed fighting with Bellamy, even when he was pathetically easy to defeat. He fights with his whole heart. Before him, Echo had never met someone as passionate, as uncompromised with his feelings, much less a warrior and spy, and Echo loves him for it.

The second sun is setting, casting his beardless face into golden shadows. He looks powerful as he prowls forward, his hair falling over his eyes and lips pulled into a tight line. He looks younger like he did in the Mountain when he first showed her kindness.

Echo rolls under his attack and tries to swipe his legs from under him.

He fights as she taught him during the long months on the Ring, muscle memory resonating through his amnesia.

Bellamy blocks her punch, twists his hands, grabbing her upper arm, and throws her over his shoulder. She lands flat on her back, the blow knocking the air out of her lungs. Before she has time to react, he’s straddling her hips, his body warm and breath fanning over her face, her forearm still clasped tightly in his hand.

He looks tussled, cheeks flushed and eyes impossibly dark. Echo’s mouth runs dry; her body hums with the desire to pull him closer, to run her hands through his unruly curls, to tip her hips and wrap herself around him.

His eyes flit down to her lips and back up. A part of her wants him to kiss her, wants to taste him again and feel his lips moving against hers. Another, more rational and cautious, reminds her that he isn’t as he was, he doesn’t remember their courtship or the careful way they danced around each other. He doesn’t love her, and she shouldn’t expect him to.

Echo bites back a whimper when he licks his lips. She fists her hands to keep them quiet.

She needs to stop this, needs to get his weight off her and…

Bellamy kisses her, soft and timid, and curious. It has nothing of the anger and confusion of their first kiss so many years ago. The first time they kissed, after a sparring session much like this one, it was a challenge, a continuation of their fight full of teeth and tugging for control. Now, though, he’s nearly reverent in his touch, and Echo feels herself melting.

She screws her eyes shut, unwilling to listen to the voice in the back of her head telling her that he doesn’t remember, that he’s doing what he thinks he’s supposed to.

Bellamy pulls away slowly like he doesn’t want to stop. Echo watches him open his eyes and stare at her like he just realized what he has done.

Flushing brightly, he stumbles away, falling gracelessly on his butt.

“Sorry ’bout that,” he mumbles, fixing his eyes on the tips of his boots.

“Did you remember?” She already knows the answer. They have spent over three years learning, playing, and experimenting with each other, and never has he been timid. Soft and kind, but never shy.

Still, she needs to know. Needs to hear him say it because the small spark of hope won’t go away.

Bellamy shakes his head, and Echo wants to punch him. She rolls to her feet instead.

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t toy with me,” her voice comes harsher than she intended.

The pleasant tiredness that follows her nightly sparring sessions is gone. In its place, something like anger twists in her belly. Echo takes a deep breath, trying to wrestle the feeling down.

She isn’t angry with Bellamy, not really. It would be easier if she were because then she could lash out or walk away. Instead, she is left with impotence and exhaustion and loss and a fit of unfocused anger at being denied the one thing she wants more than anything.

“I am not.”

Bellamy’s voice startles her. She wipes her face surreptitiously before turning to face him. He peeks at her through his long lashes, abashed.

“Why did you do it?” she snaps.

“I- Because you are amazing?” he offers a small, wry smile. “I shouldn’t have, sorry.”

“Think nothing of it.” Echo turns away, but he speaks again, stopping her retreat.

“I don’t remember getting to know you, but there are things I just know. Like, I know that you dislike sleeping on the right side of the bed, or that you have a scar on your thigh.”

“I have many scars, Bellamy.”

“No, but this one makes you shudder every time I press my fingers to it. You are ticklish on the backs of the knees, and you hate setting traps for rabbits. I know that, when you are nervous, you flick the nail of your left thumb and that the only one who could make you bark out in ‘undignified laughter’ was Harper. I wish I could remember learning trig from you, and how I found out that you have a freckle next to your little toe. And it is unfair because I feel like I am just getting to know you and you have known me for ages, but I can’t stop thinking about you. Whenever I see you, my heart does this little skip. Every time I see you playing with Madi, I wish it was our daughter-“

Echo grabs him by the front of the shirt, slamming her lips against his and effectively shutting him up.

Bellamy groans like she knew he would when she bites his lower lip, his hands tangling in her hair, traveling up and down her back. He fits against her body as he has always done. When she finally lets him up for air, his eyes are as dark and hungry as ever; his smile could put the suns to shame.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting. As always, this wasn't beta'd


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